


if ever there were a lucky kind

by trshmthtzr



Series: CU_L8R [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: And Also Feelings, Blow Jobs, Canon Universe, M/M, Making Out, Memory Loss, One Night Stands, richie and eddie meet for the second time and eddie takes him home, this got way longer than i intended for it to be :) oops, this is part of a twitter SMAU!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:01:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27071665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trshmthtzr/pseuds/trshmthtzr
Summary: Richie & Eddie meet again, for the second night in a row. This time, they talk... and Eddie offers to take him home.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: CU_L8R [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1975780
Comments: 15
Kudos: 89





	if ever there were a lucky kind

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set in 2002, in the canon universe between movies where the losers have separated from one another and forgotten their past. It takes place 30 updates into part 1 of the Twitter SMAU @CU_L8R_AU -- the SMAU isn't required reading, but it will put some things in context! :) 
> 
> Title from Wolf Like Me by TV on the Radio

Richie walks into the dimly-lit, smoke-filled bar just shy of a quarter to one in the morning. Eddie sees him the second he arrives because he has been watching the only entrance like a hawk while nervously shredding the label on the half-full, room-temperature bottle of beer cradled in his hands. He thinks, briefly, that he _feels_ Richie’s presence at the same time as he sees him; and wonders if he would’ve known he was there with the same unwavering immediacy if he hadn’t been looking. It’s a weird thought and a fleeting one.

Eddie fights the urge to throw his hand in the air like an over-eager child and wave-- _here I am, I’m who you’re looking for, don’t you see me?_

Instead, he waits. Richie’s eyes seem to be adjusting to the room as he dazedly scans the crowd, features mostly masked by distance but a prominent scrunch to the line of his brow. He spots Eddie from across the bar and the moment blooms on his face, expression endearingly unmonitored. Even as he looks down to navigate the sea of people seated at tiny tables precariously laden with empty glasses, Eddie notices that Richie’s smile lingers, though it’s softer around the edges now.

“I can’t tell you how relieved I am to see you,” Richie says when he reaches Eddie, tucked into a corner at the foot of the abandoned performance stage. “When I didn’t hear any music playing I thought maybe I’d made you up in my head.”

“Your first thought was that I didn’t exist?” Eddie asks him teasingly.

“Yeah, well, it was either that you weren’t real or that you were fucking with me,” Richie answers sheepishly, “and I guess I’d prefer the reality where you don’t exist at all.” It sounds like a joke, but at the same time, it doesn’t.

There’s a pause, unlike the awkward pauses Eddie has grown accustomed to. It feels less like they’re taking time and more like time is moving too fast and graciously granting them a moment to catch up. Richie’s eyes are warm behind the thick lenses of his glasses, curious and magnified. He clears his throat, and the feeling of suspension dissipates with the silence. He smiles at Eddie again. “I’m glad that both of those thoughts were wrong. I’m really happy that you exist.”

Eddie’s laugh surprises him. The statement is absurd, lacking circumstantial depth due to the recency of their meeting, but still somehow filled with undeniable sincerity. He isn’t sure why he finds it so funny. Smiling, he echoes the sentiment: “I’m happy that I exist, too.” It’s easy, simple flirting but Eddie feels comforted when he realizes that he means it. There were times, not too long ago even, when it would’ve felt like lying to say.

“So, have you heard of this band before?” Richie asks, waving over his shoulder to indicate the empty expanse of the dark stage. It has been stripped of instruments, but still houses the barest skeleton of a set--a microphone-less microphone stand, a stack of amplifiers, various cords bunched into bundles underneath thick, colorful strips of electrical tape. “I really like their energy, but the lyrics are lacking a bit,” he continues, casual attitude offset by the rhythmic pattern of his fingers drumming on the side of the small, wooden table between them.

“No,” Eddie plays along, “I’ve never heard them before.” He glances at Richie’s restless hand and tapping fingers. “But I do think the drummer is pretty cute.”

Richie looks over his shoulder reflexively, like he thinks there actually might be a drummer on stage, forgetting momentarily that he’d been the one to joke about the ghost band in the first place. He catches himself, turning back to Eddie with an overexaggerated expression, attempting to brush the entire reaction off as part of the shtick. “Pretty cute, yeah,” he agrees, fingers picking up a faster rhythm to dispel his nervous energy. Eddie wonders if he even notices that he’s doing it, knows he didn’t catch the joke; looks pointedly at Richie’s drumming hand until Richie notices, and understands.

“Oh!” He laughs suddenly, sort of like a bark, and pulls his hand back into his lap. “Ha, sorry, I don’t notice I’m doing that, most of the time. My limbs are sort of like Thing--y’know, from the Addams Family?--they do whatever the fuck they want.”

Before Eddie can even press back with an attempt to reignite the flirting Richie had stumbled over like a baby deer in a tangled patch of forest, Richie keeps talking. “Where are your friends?” he asks. Then, in a lower voice, “thought this wasn’t a date, Spagheddie?”

Eddie pointedly ignores the second question and chooses to address the first. “They had to leave early,” he says, shrugging. “The drummer got sick right before my friend’s set, so the rest of them took him home.”

“But you stayed?”

“Well yeah, you doofus. I didn’t want you to think that I was fucking with you, or that I didn’t exist.”

“That’s--you didn’t have to do that, man,” Richie says quietly, and Eddie rips a line straight through the remainder of the beer bottle label between his fingers. He inhales uncomfortably deep and his chest feels quite suddenly too full, like he needs to reach inside himself and pull something out to both relieve the tension and show to Richie. _Look_ , he wants to say, _look at the size of what I feel when I look at you, it’s too much to carry alone, you deserve to feel some of the warmth you’ve created_. He isn’t sure where the intensity comes from.

“But I’m glad that you did,” Richie continues again (a little louder, now), before Eddie can move his lips and tongue to form words. Eddie hasn’t been holding his breath, but he has been holding the tension in his chest. He exhales and feels the ache in his ribcage soften along with the slope of his shoulders.

“Me too,” he says, and realizes with unprecedented urgency that he doesn’t want to talk to Richie in the corner of a bar with a sticky floor and too many people, anymore. He grabs a napkin from the small pile in front of him and tips the handful of damp, shredded bottle label into the center of it before folding it up into a little trash ball. Grabbing another napkin, he sits up a little taller and locks eyes with Richie again. “Got a pen?” he asks.

“Uhhh yeah, I usually keep a few on me,” Richie responds distractedly as he pats his open-palmed hands over the pockets of his jeans and navy blue jacket. He stops feeling himself up when he’s got one arm shoved into the opposite half of his coat and pulls two black-ink pens from an inside pocket. Brandishing them in front of him like the winner in a game of capture the flag presenting his victory, Richie grins wide and goofy. He taps the side of his head with the knuckles of his other hand. “I’ve got too much gold up here to risk losing it just because I don’t have a pen to write things down with.”

Eddie takes one of the pens from Richie’s proffered hand and hunches over the napkin in front of him to write a simple note. _Hi._ He slides it across the table to Richie, who looks nothing short of delighted.

Richie uncaps the pen in his hand and pulls the napkin closer to himself to write his response, shielding it from Eddie’s view with a dramatically placed forearm. When he slides the napkin back across the table, it’s been flipped so the text is facing Eddie. _OH_ , it says in all capital letters, _ARE WE PASSING NOTES NOW?_

Eddie laughs but doesn’t say anything. They’re both smiling, both aware of how childish they’re being, but he takes the time to write back anyway, even if it’s just a simple, _Yeah._

He watches carefully as Richie pens out his message, slow and deliberate, before passing the napkin back. _I CAN WORK WITH THAT. SORRY I MISSED THE MUSIC_.

Eddie frowns. Richie’s apologies threaten to bring back the uncomfortable fullness in his chest, and he doesn’t know if he’s quite ready to examine that feeling yet. He doesn’t want Richie to apologize to him, and he knows that if he mentions it an apology is exactly what will follow. He decides to let it slide, this time, but hopes he can convey the sentiment. _I think the music missed you_ , he writes.

Richie takes longer to read this message before responding than the previous ones. _BETWEEN THIS & THE TALK OF DATES, YOU MIGHT GIVE A GUY THE WRONG IDEA EDDIE_. He looks distractedly toward the bar behind him while Eddie reads it, and Eddie isn’t sure if he’s considering getting a drink or just hoping to avoid eye contact after making himself vulnerable. Eddie doesn’t want him to get a drink, doesn’t want him to avoid eye contact, wants to be vulnerable with him.

He passes the napkin back across the table. _No, I’m pretty straight to the point. Wanna get out of here?_

Richie looks up at him after reading it and smiles.

\---

It’s a short walk back to Eddie’s apartment, but the journey there feels substantial. Richie’s gait is broader, more loping than the quick, clipped stride that Eddie adopted out of necessity when he started high school in the city. Their steps don’t match but somehow their pace does, seemingly without much accommodation. It’s a crisp night following a warm day, and the air feels clearer to Eddie than it has all summer. 

They make light conversation but enjoy each other’s silence just as much; talk at length about Richie’s horrible roommates and briefly about the overbearing mother Eddie left to live on his own. Eventually, they settle into a spontaneous, nonverbal game consisting solely of trying to knock the other off balance. The game ends when Richie ends up on the ground, laughing loud and breathless, holding his hand in the air and waiting for Eddie to help him back up. Confident in his victory but also in his fondness, Eddie obliges.

Richie stands behind him, hands in his pockets and breath just barely visible in the night air as Eddie fumbles his ring of keys in search of the one that will open the front door of his apartment complex. He finds it and leads Richie into a small lobby, empty except for a few packages on the floor underneath rows and rows of mailboxes set into the tiled wall. Instinctively he approaches his own mailbox but figures the routine can wait until the morning--there isn’t anything he will find in there that feels more important than this.

He identifies a second key to unlock one of the elevators to their right, opposite the mailboxes. Gears rumble to life behind the wall, _click, click, clicking_ with increasing volume as the elevator box approaches the ground floor from wherever someone had ridden it last. Richie hasn’t said anything since they arrived, but Eddie can feel the weight of his gaze on the back of his neck. Without returning it, he steps into the elevator. Richie follows, and the doors close behind them. 

The elevators in his building used to freak Eddie out, but he’s grown accustomed to them, learned that their age indicates sturdiness and good foundations even if it doesn’t always mean reliability. The one they’re in--the middle one of three--is the elevator that Eddie likes the most. He’s convinced that it operates faster than the others do, and smoother as well. It seems like the kind of thing he would make small talk about to his neighbors if he were close enough to any of them to make small talk. He wonders if Richie is the type of person who makes friends with his neighbors, huffs out a laugh when he realizes that he absolutely is, and wonders further if he’d try to make friends with _Eddie’s_ neighbors if they ran into one of them.

Luckily, the hallway is empty when the elevator doors open onto the ninth floor. Richie steps out first, but stops abruptly and grins when he realizes he has no idea where he’s going. “You lead the way,” he says to Eddie, “I’m just along for the ride.”

Eddie bumps his shoulder against Richie’s upper arm affectionately as he passes him, heading left down the carpeted hallway. He hears Richie’s feet shuffling along behind him, quiet again as they reach Eddie’s door and he flips through his keys once more to unlock it. It’s dark for a moment when they enter. Eddie feels along the wall until he finds the light switch, not yet having committed its distance from the door to muscle memory.

When he moved away from his mother for the second time (the first having been to attend college, which she nearly didn’t let him do, but he persisted only to return to her four years later with a degree and no clue what he was doing), Eddie was focused entirely on getting out and paid little mind to the finer details of the apartment he was moving into. He’s managed to settle into it, found ways over time to make it comfortably his own, but doesn’t often invite people into the space. It doesn’t really hit him that he doesn’t, or even further _why_ he doesn’t until Richie is standing in the kitchen of his boxy, boring little apartment, uncertain and shadowed under the yellow lamplight. He looks simultaneously too big and very small at the same time like he’s shrinking in on himself, waiting for Eddie to say something. 

So, Eddie reaches toward Richie and says, “come here.”

Richie kisses him the moment he reaches him. It takes Eddie by surprise but he eases into it nonetheless, like a pat of butter melting in a skillet over a hot stove. Richie’s lips are softer than Eddie thought they’d be, and Eddie realizes this at the same time as he realizes that he’s been imagining what Richie’s lips would feel like on his for the past twenty-four hours. 

It's a thorough kiss--Richie seems determined to learn as much as he can like he thinks that maybe Eddie's going to suddenly change his mind. His hands flutter nervously by their sides until Eddie grips them firmly in his own and brings them to his waist, pressing his tongue into Richie's mouth.

They work their way down the hall pressed chest-to-chest, four legs tangled but deliberate, walking together like complementary steps of a dance routine known by both of their bones. Richie’s lips have begun a path down the side of Eddie's neck, mouth wet against the soft spot where it meets his shoulder. He’s hunched over Eddie like he wants to fold himself into him, cupping his face in one palm and resting the other, warm, on the small of Eddie’s back. 

“Do you want--” Eddie starts, but he’s cut off by Richie kissing him squarely on the mouth. He sinks into it easily for a second time. Their meandering path down the hall slows to a halt in front of his bedroom door as the kiss deepens. 

Richie pulls back, eyelids heavy, lips somehow already redder than before. “Yeah,” he answers before Eddie can pick up the end of the question he dropped. “Yeah, I want.” It’s a shade too earnest to be convincingly smooth, but Eddie thinks that he probably prefers the former to the latter.

He reaches behind himself to turn the doorknob to his bedroom and opens it slowly, back pressed against the door. Richie’s hand is still warm against the side of Eddie’s face, and he shuffles forward into the bedroom, waiting until the door is wide open to crowd him against it and kiss him again.

Eddie can’t remember the last time he was kissed like this. He thinks that he must have been, at some point, because the feeling isn’t entirely unfamiliar. His phone _beep_ s softly in his pocket, and he decides that it can wait for later. Reaching forward to tug at the hem of Richie’s shirt with one hand, Eddie brings the other up to the side of his own face and rests it over Richie’s. It isn’t the first time he notices the significant difference between the sizes of their palms, but this time he _feels_ the observation, presses forward into the kiss with a firmness that tugs a soft noise out of Richie. He pulls away to kiss down the side of Eddie’s neck again, flexing the hand on his face underneath Eddie’s so that their fingers tangle together.

He’s folding himself into Eddie again, kissing along his collarbone, and Eddie pulls a little more insistently at the hem of Richie’s shirt. “Can I--” he starts but stops because Richie begins mumbling something against his shoulder at the same time. “What was that?” Eddie coaxes, laughing softly.

“I’ll let you take off mine if you let me take off yours,” Richie says, muffled still but clearer than before, and the fullness returns to Eddie’s chest once again. On the surface, it’s a harmless statement, but Eddie hears the insecurity underneath it--recognizes it already, despite knowing him for only a day. He’s unsure whether everybody is able to read Richie like an open book, or if it’s something personal; he realizes only as he thinks it that he hopes it’s something personal. He’s unsure why he feels compelled to intimacy with Richie so strongly, so uncharacteristically quickly.

“Deal,” he agrees, and they take turns pulling each other’s shirts up to and over their heads as they move together toward Eddie’s mattress in the semi-dark room. Richie’s shirt gets stuck on his glasses and flings them off of his face with a force intense enough to shock peals of laughter from the both of them, and they are forced to take a minute to calm down. Enough light bleeds down the hall from the kitchen and through the cracks in Eddie’s window curtains that he is able to track down Richie’s glasses at the foot of his bed. He holds them up questioningly, delicately between their chests. “Do you want these back?”

“Yeah,” Richie says, groping the air in front of him aimlessly before he’s able to settle his hand on Eddie’s. He stills there for a moment before he gently takes his glasses back and puts them on his face. “I want to be able to see you.” Eddie understands. Richie is even better looking with his shirt off than Eddie thought he would be, looks soft in places he can't wait to get his hands on, has a dark patch of chest hair that thins out over the expanse of his belly and picks back up above the waistband of his jeans.

“I don’t usually do things like this,” Eddie blurts suddenly, and he wishes immediately that he could rewind himself like a cassette tape and say something a little less embarrassing. Richie laughs, which would usually trigger Eddie’s defenses but somehow he knows he’s not laughing _at_ him--he’s laughing like he knows him. Like he understands.

“I don’t either,” Richie clarifies, and there’s something off about his voice. Eddie doesn’t realize that he’s speaking in an accent until he continues. “Sorry if you were under the impression that I'm some sorta Casanova, but this is the first time a guy's offered to take me home with him.” The accent drops and reveals only nervous sincerity beneath. “I don’t know what the fuck to do with my hands.”

“I think you’re figuring it out just fine,” Eddie reassures him.

As if attempting to convince himself that Eddie’s words are true, Richie’s hands are back on his face now, his lips are back on his skin, and his warm palms are sliding down toward the tops of Eddie’s shoulders. He pushes gently--less forceful and more questioning--and Eddie understands intrinsically what he wants, sinks down to sit on the bed behind him. Richie follows him, crawls into his lap, and brackets Eddie’s hips with his knees as he sucks on the curve of his neck. Eddie brings his hand to the back of Richie’s head and buries his fingers in the mess of his hair, holding him in place. 

There’s another loud _beep_ from the pocket of Eddie’s jeans, but he chooses to ignore it. He uses the hand tangled in Richie’s hair to pull him gently from the crook of his neck, watches in awe the ease with which Richie follows his unspoken guidance. Eddie brings the palm of his hand down and forwards from the back of Richie’s head to cup his chin and the firm line of his jaw. His thumb moves without his permission, moves before he can stop it to press upon the swell of Richie’s bottom lip. 

Richie surges forward to kiss Eddie around the tip of his thumb, and they giggle into it as Eddie digs the digit into a firmer grip rather than pulling back like Richie seems to have expected. The kiss is sloppy and they’re laughing, lightheaded, as Eddie hooks his thumb enough to pull on Richie’s lower lip. His knuckle grazes Richie’s teeth and the wetness of his gums as he backs up, finally, mesmerized. Richie’s eyes are glazed over now behind his glasses, but brightly hazy. He looks drunk, even though Eddie knows that he isn’t. 

Eddie’s hand reverses its trajectory then, making its way back to the base of Richie’s skull to drag him in for another kiss. It’s warm and exploratory, searching--Eddie thinks in that moment, starkly, that he’ll let Richie explore whatever he wants. He isn’t a stranger to this sort of touch but has found himself a bit out of practice, has managed to let a couple of years go by without remembering how much he’d once wanted it. He remembers now.

They’re moving together like they’d rehearsed at some point without knowing what they were preparing for. Eddie has one hand in Richie’s hair and one holding the soft expanse of skin swelling over the waistband of Richie’s jeans-- _l_ _ove handles_ , he thinks fondly, _is a very accurate description_. He slides his palm across Richie's side toward his back, feels goosebumps erupt on his skin, pulls him closer as Eddie sucks on his tongue. Richie moans at that, from deep within the broad expanse of his chest, and it makes Eddie want to eat him whole. _Beep._

Richie pulls away, laughing breathily as he nips Eddie’s lower lip once, twice, three times before pressing a kiss to it and leaning back to look down at Eddie’s lap. “Sounds like someone really wants to talk to you, Eds,” he says in a gruff voice, and it's another one Eddie hasn’t heard yet. It doesn’t sound like one of Richie’s Voices that he does when he’s on stage or when he’s nervous. It feels natural. Unguarded.

Eddie groans dramatically and throws his head back, eyes closed, to lament the interruption before reaching between them to pull his Blackberry out of his pocket. “There’s always someone who really wants to talk to me,” he grumbles, “but that shouldn’t mean I always have to answer them.”

Richie laughs at that, leaning back a bit so his weight settles more toward Eddie’s knees than his lap in order to allow space between them for texting. Eddie opens his messages, not knowing what to expect, and is annoyed but relieved to find they’re just from a concerned friend checking in. He feels guilty, but not guilty enough to do anything more than text back a brief apology and let her know that he made it home safely. He puts the phone down on the bed next to him and reaches for Richie, but the kiss breaks off again when his phone _beep_ s with another message shortly after. 

“I’m going to kill her,” he says as he picks up his phone again to read Jessie's message: _???? did bigfoot stand u up_ , followed by a frowny face. He hadn't intended on telling her that he'd brought someone home with him yet, was planning to wait and see how things went, but he knows that if she thinks he’s alone she’s at least ninety-six percent likely to call him to swap details of their nights since they’d parted.

He quickly taps out a response: _No, he showed._ Smiley face. 

Richie waits patiently, still perched in his lap. Eddie presses **_SEND_** but receives another text from Jessie immediately: _and????????_

He sighs and considers his options. 

“Is that your friend from the bar?” Richie asks. Eddie half expects him to be annoyed--knows he’d be annoyed himself if someone interrupted what they'd had going on to text another person--but he mostly seems amused. 

"Yeah," Eddie tells him, "she’s nosy but she means well. Just trying to make sure I made it home safely.”

Richie hums, leaning forward to kiss Eddie’s forehead. It’s sweet and unhurried, unlike the way he was kissing him before. Eddie wonders how many different types of kisses Richie has left in him to give, wants to spend time trying to find out--sweet ones, sleepy ones, urgent ones, kisses the morning after… He stops himself there, remembering what Richie had said about leaving for Philly the next day. He resolves to appreciate any and all kisses he is afforded before he’s forced to say goodbye.

“She sounds like a really good friend," Richie says, "I’m glad that you have her to look out for you.”

“I don’t need someone to look out for me,” Eddie says, with a little more bite to it than he intends. Underneath the thick cover of the reaction, he feels glad too. He types out a text intended to end the conversation for the night: _And I found someone else to walk me home tonight._ Smiley face with a halo. _**SEND**_.

“I’m sure you don’t," Richie shrugs, "you seem very capable. ‘S just nice to have". Another attempt at appearing casual is betrayed by the tender cadence of his voice. 

“Sometimes,” Eddie agrees. “Other times, I wish she would go to bed.” Richie laughs at that, presses another wet kiss to his forehead before starting a path down to his brow, his cheekbone, his chin. _Beep_.

“This is the last one I’m responding to,” Eddie promises through gritted teeth, and he’s unsure whether he’s trying to convince Richie or himself. _hello??????_ , Jessie is asking, _did he come inside with u??_

Eddie chooses to answer with a non-answer, types out a brief _goodnight_ text with a heart, and hits **_SEND_ ** before throwing his phone on the floor. It hits the carpet with a dull thud and, a moment later, a muffled _beep._

“No,” Eddie insists.

Slowly--so slowly that it becomes comedic but still somehow manages to cut Eddie’s breath short in his chest--Richie begins to slide out of Eddie’s lap and onto the floor in front of him like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Eddie isn’t sure what his plan is but the look on Richie’s face says he has one--he’s grinning like a goofball as he rests one hand on top of Eddie’s thighs where he had been sitting just moments before. Then, with the other hand, he reaches for Eddie’s phone.

“ _No,_ ” Eddie repeats, “Why are you on her side? I am not answering anymore, I told her goodnight already.”

“You don’t have to answer her," Richie says, still smiling. "I’ll do it for you."

“What?” Eddie feels suddenly hysterical. He reaches for his phone but Richie laughs and pulls it away toward his bare chest, typing clumsily on the full keyboard of the Blackberry.

“No,” Eddie says again, firmly. This time he’s not just disagreeing, he’s asking Richie to stop. There’s something familiar buzzing underneath the surface of his skin as he prepares himself to have to say it again.

He doesn’t have to--Richie stops typing. “Don’t you trust me?” he asks, still grinning. The question doesn’t sound like it usually sounds, coming from the mouths of people who have tried to convince Eddie they know better than he does. Regardless of how it sounds (genuine, playful, familiar), it still strikes Eddie as ridiculous. _Trust you?_ he thinks, _I barely know you._

But that’s not what Eddie tells him. What comes out of his mouth is the exact opposite of what he’s thinking, which is not something Eddie usually finds himself having a problem with. "Fine,” he says, "I do," and after saying it allows himself to consider the possibility of its truth.

Richie smiles and hits **_SEND_ **with a flourish. “I don’t think she’ll be saying much more, after that.” His tone is mild, but it still makes Eddie’s curiosity spike to a near-manic level again.

He tries to keep his voice level. “Do I want to know what you typed?"

“Well, she said your full name, so I said it back, but then I said you were unavailable because you were about to get your dick sucked off your body.”

Eddie isn't sure what to say; so he asks, dumbly, “What?”

“We don’t have to,” Richie says hurriedly. “I just figured it would get her to leave us alone.”

“We don’t--what? Are you insane?”

“Probably.” Richie looks a bit lost now, knees folded underneath him as he looks up at Eddie earnestly. “I just figured that if she thought you were--y’know, maybe that would get her to leave you alone until the morning. But really, I mean it, we don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” he reassures. Eddie reaches out to rest his palm against the curve of Richie's jaw again, thumbs distractedly at his lip.

“No, I do,” he says. “I _do_ want, I just… Why’d you have to say it like you’re a fucking... industrial-strength Hoover?”

Richie wiggles his eyebrows. “Wanna find out?”

Before Eddie has the chance to answer him, the phone _beep_ s again and Richie bursts into laughter as he reads Jessie’s latest text from the phone still in his hand.

“She’s relentless,” Eddie says with a dramatic eye roll. “What now?”

“She called you a slut and told you to text her in the morning. Problem solved.” Richie puts the phone down on the ground again and slides it across the carpet, away from the bed. “Now can we please get back to the matter at hand--”

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees easily, and slides his hand back into the mess of shaggy brown hair at the base of Richie's neck where he’s still kneeling in front of him, “let’s do that.”

Richie leans in with Eddie’s permission and mouths at the line of his collarbone again. He trails lower this time, one hand blazing a path for his mouth to follow, thumbing over Eddie’s flushed chest. Eddie swallows thickly when Richie grazes his nipple, and there’s no doubt that Richie hears it because he immediately does it a second time with more confidence, then trails after it with his tongue. Eddie gasps and arches into the touch, more sensitive than he remembers. 

His attention lingers, heavy, on the feeling of Richie's warm mouth on his chest until its focus is stolen by the movement of a hand at the waistband of his jeans.

"This OK?" Richie asks, looking up at him with his hands paused as he waits for an answer.

Eddie nods so eagerly that he feels like a fucking bobblehead. "Yeah, it's OK," he says, then adds without thinking, "please.”

Richie unbuttons his jeans one-handed while the other continues tracing patterns across Eddie’s chest, and Eddie finds it so stupidly hot that the joke he intends to make about Richie's endless wealth of party tricks dies on his tongue. Before he can untangle his brain from itself his jeans are being unzipped and slipped down the length of his legs. Richie leans back to pull them all the way off and nearly yanks one of Eddie's socks off as well, in the process. He tosses the jeans into a pile behind him on the carpet and tugs Eddie's sock affectionately back over the heel of his foot.

He had been kneeling upright before but now he settles back to sit on his feet. Texting with Jessie had killed some of the pent-up energy from making out in the hall, but Eddie could feel himself starting to thicken up in his boxer briefs in anticipation. Richie pauses for a moment and exhales a trembling breath. It's only then that Eddie realizes Richie's hands are shaking. He had seemed so sure of himself, just seconds before.

“I know that you told me we didn’t have to do anything I don’t want to do," Eddie says abruptly, "but you know that the same goes for you, right? I don’t have any expectations, no matter what you said to Jessie. We can go back to making out if you want, I'm just happy to have you here.”

Richie laughs, which was not on the list of possible reactions Eddie had accounted for.

“Fuck, Eddie." He's still laughing, and his hands seem steadier now. “I appreciate it, man, I really, _really_ do, but… I'm good. I'm beyond good, I'm like... golden, y'know? You one hundred percent absofuckinglutely do not need to worry about whether or not I want to do this." He ducks his head and leaves a path of kisses from Eddie's knee toward his groin, leaning forward as he does, pushing Eddie's thighs further apart with the breadth of his shoulders. "You've got no idea how long I’ve wanted this," he continues, breath hot against the inside of Eddie’s bare thigh. It’s quiet, reverent almost, and Eddie isn’t sure if he was meant to hear it. He’s not even sure if Richie knows he’s said it out loud.

“Richie,” he laughs softly, interrupted by a sharp inhale as Richie nips at a particularly sensitive patch of skin with his teeth. “You just met me last night,” he reminds him. Richie looks up at him like he’s trying to piece the words of Eddie’s sentence into an order that makes sense. His face is flushed, hair a mess from the thorough attention of Eddie’s fingers, eyes half-lidded. 

“Yeah,” he finally says, “I guess you’re right.” They break eye contact as Richie returns his attention to the soft hairs at the tops of Eddie's thighs, running his fingers lightly along the hems of his boxers. "You gonna let me suck your cock now?"

Eddie isn't sure if he keeps asking because he's nervous or because it turns him on to hear that he's wanted, but decides it doesn't matter; he'll answer him either way. "Please," he says again, then picks one of his feet up off the floor to slide the crook of his knee over Richie's shoulder. Richie lets out another moan, muffled halfway through when he leans forward to mouth at Eddie through the fabric of his boxers.

It isn't like Eddie's never had somebody's mouth on his dick before, but there's something about Richie that makes him feel like it's his first time. There's something quietly life-altering about the way he hooks his thumbs underneath the elastic waistband of Eddie's underwear and slides them down his legs gently, fits his broad palm along the underside of Eddie's thigh and props it back up over his shoulder, kisses the soft skin and patch of hair underneath Eddie's navel. He bites at Eddie's hip and pulls another gasp from him.

Then, Richie dips his head down and licks a fat, wet stripe across the underside of Eddie's cock. Eddie's hips twitch into it and he leans backward, supporting his weight on one hand and holding the back of Richie’s head with the other. Richie's got his hand around him now, rubbing spit-slick and rhythmic near the base. He presses sloppy kisses to the head, opens his mouth to rest it on his tongue, and feels Eddie grow harder in response.

Richie is still holding Eddie's leg up over his shoulder, and the fingers of that hand twitch where they're resting atop the meat of Eddie's thigh. Eddie tangles their fingers together, holds Richie's hand tightly as a means of distracting himself from the near-insatiable urge to fuck up into his waiting mouth. He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes for a moment, and tries to be patient while Richie jacks Eddie off onto his tongue.

When he blinks his eyes back open, it's just in time to see Richie's lips close around his cock and slide down the shaft until they meet the sides of his encircled thumb and forefinger. Eddie feels him swallow indirectly, feels the way his soft palate contracts against the tip of his dick and his jaw trembles with the effort of holding itself open. Richie takes his hand--even wetter now, with fresh spit--off of his dick and uses it to reach behind Eddie and pull his hips closer, so that he can suck the rest of him down until the head of his cock bumps against the back of Richie's throat.

_Like a fucking industrial-strength Hoover,_ Eddie thinks, insanely.

Richie pauses for a moment with Eddie's cock in his throat and breathes through his nose. He blinks wetly up at Eddie, who has been waiting for Richie to look up since he opened his eyes again. Eddie smiles and gently pushes a few strands of sweaty brown hair from where they're practically plastered to Richie's forehead. "You're doing incredible," he tells him without really knowing what he's saying, "doing such a good job for me."

He'd be embarrassed by the honesty behind the words if they didn't make Richie moan around him and if that didn't feel so fucking _good_ , but before Eddie can open his mouth to say something else in hopes of making it happen again, Richie gags wetly and pulls off entirely. He wipes his dripping mouth with the back of his forearm and starts jacking Eddie off again while he catches his breath.

"You're so fucking hot," Richie tells him, and Eddie laughs because he was just about to say the exact same thing. 

He isn't sure how he got lucky enough to bring someone to bed who is just as into Eddie as Eddie is into him, but he decides not to question it. “You’re one to talk,” he teases, fondly.

Richie huffs out a laugh and Eddie means to insist--feels the urge to grab him by the chin and catch his gaze so that he can tell him again, stubbornly, how handsome Eddie thinks he is--but he doesn't get the chance because suddenly Richie's mouth is back on his cock and all Eddie can manage is a breathy " _fuck_ ".

Things get a bit hazy from there, and Eddie knows he's probably not going to last much longer when he loses the ability to keep himself from fucking his hips up into Richie's mouth. Richie takes it at first, using one of his hands to guide Eddie's to the back of his head again. He whines deep in his throat and Eddie tightens his hold on Richie's hair, pressing his head into Eddie's lap with a drawn-out moan. Richie moans too, then gags again and has to pull off. He doesn't wipe his face this time, and he's got spit dripping down his chin. His eyes are blown-out, pupils huge in the dim light leaking into the room. His hand is back around Eddie's dick, sloppy with his own spit and Eddie's precum.

"D'you wanna come on my face, Eds?" Richie asks with a quick, crooked smile and Eddie feels like somebody punched him in the solar plexus.

" _Fuck_ ," he says again, "Yeah, Richie, please let me come--"

"Let you?" Richie asks, laughing again. "You're the one doing me a favor here, trust me." Richie takes his hand off Eddie's dick for a second to spit into his palm before continuing at an even faster pace than before. He lets his jaw hang, mouth glistening and open in front of where he's jacking Eddie off. The entire lower half of his face is wet with spit and _fuck_ , Eddie thinks, _soon it'll be wet with my come, too._

He's fucking up into Richie's hand now, can't see where the other hand is but the idea that Richie might be reaching down to palm over his own erection hits Eddie like a freight train.

"I'm close," he tells Richie, breath starting to hitch unevenly. "I'm really fucking close."

"Come on," Richie begs him, face drawing closer to where his hand is speeding up its pace. He sticks his tongue out and slaps the head of Eddie's cock against the wet surface of it a few times before kissing down his shaft messily. His hand keeps moving as he leans down and sucks one of Eddie's balls into his mouth, rolls it around with his tongue, then opens his lips to let it fall out so that he can kiss his way back up to his own hand. "Come on my face, Eddie, please, I want it so bad," he whines.

"Yeah?" Eddie asks, and he's not normally so chatty during sex but he can't seem to stop his mouth from running with Richie. "You like that, baby? Gonna make a fucking mess out of you." He doesn't even know what he's saying anymore, but Richie stutters out a groan punctuated by a whimper, in response. The fucked-out look on his face combined with the clench of his hand around Eddie's cock is what does it, in the end. He comes so hard that he cries out with it and between that and the roaring in his head like the noise from pressing his ear to a seashell, he barely hears Richie coaxing him through it. When his hearing returns to normal (though he thinks his ears might be ringing a bit), there's only the sound of them catching their breaths.

For as earth-shatteringly good as it feels, it passes just as quickly. Eddie is brought back down to earth by a sharp twinge in his hip from where his leg is still hooked over Richie's shoulder in front of him. He hasn't yet recovered to the point of sending proper, working signals all the way from his brain to his legs, so instead of moving he just says, rather lamely, "ow, my hip."

Richie laughs again and laughs harder when he reaches up instinctively to wipe his mouth and pulls away with a hand covered in come. Eddie laughs, too. He's positive that he's never laughed this much during sex, and the realization makes him feel like the first time he tried on a pair of reading glasses at the age of twenty-four and saw that words were supposed to be sharp and clear rather than blurry and unmanageable. _Is this what I've been missing out on?_

"Ow," Richie responds in kind, "my knees".

"Get up here then," Eddie urges, finally regaining enough control over his body to slide his leg off of Richie's shoulder. He reaches toward his nightstand to hand Richie a handful of tissues, waits patiently for him to clean his face off, and then tries to tug him forward onto the bed. "I'll return the favor," he promises sweetly.

Richie flushes at that. "It's fine," he says dismissively.

"Are you kidding me? That was amazing, let me help you--" 

Richie cuts Eddie off. "No, I mean, I already--" Then, he cuts himself off; gestures vaguely down at his body.

As if trying to explain himself without words, he gets up from where he's kneeling to crawl back into Eddie's lap. It's only then that Eddie sees Richie's managed to unbutton his own pants somewhere along the line, probably one-handed, and push them partway down his thighs to reveal purple polka-dotted boxers (now visibly soaked through with come) and a few inches of each thigh covered in dark, wiry hair.

The image of Richie coming in his own hand while he gags on Eddie's cock threatens to get him going again despite how bone-deep exhausted he feels, but he shelves it for later examination and ignores the part of him that burns with the knowledge that he'd missed it. _Next time_ , he thinks before he can cut himself off with a reminder that there probably won't be a next time, _I'll make him wait to touch himself until after so that I can watch._

He looks down at Richie's lap again and grimaces in sympathy. "Do you want to borrow a pair of boxers?" 

"No, don't worry about it man, I can just freeball it back to the motel."

"That's disgusting."

"It's not like I'll be able to get them back to you any time soon--"

"I don't need them back," Eddie says, tone firm. "You can clean up in the bathroom down the hall before you change."

Richie's mouth gapes open and closed a few times like a fish out of water until he finally croaks out an answer. "Thanks, man, it'll be nice to do the walk of shame in a fresh pair."

"You're ashamed?" Eddie asks, though he doesn't really think Richie meant it that way. At least, he hopes that he didn't.

"No," Richie answers, and it's too reflexive to be dishonest. "Are you?"

Eddie smiles, and before he can think much of it he kisses Richie on the nose. "Not at all."

Richie climbs off his lap with a bit of encouragement, and Eddie hands him a clean pair of plain grey boxer briefs from the top drawer of the wardrobe next to his bed. Soon after, he finds himself standing half-dressed in the hallway where Richie first kissed him, unsure what the fuck he's doing. He'd wanted to stay in bed, wait for Richie to come back from the bathroom and kiss him again; but he soon grew afraid that Richie would try to slip out the door unnoticed. He supposes that's the sort of thing you do with a one night stand, but Eddie didn't want it to be something Richie did with him. 

So, he waits.

He's unsure of how much time has passed when the door to the bathroom opens and Richie appears in the doorway, lit from behind by the fluorescents above the vanity mirror. He's dressed now, and there's a large lump in the left pocket of his jeans that Eddie assumes is his balled-up underwear. It's objectively gross, but Eddie finds himself feeling uncontrollably fond again. 

"Were you just waiting for me in the hall, this whole time?" Richie asks, and Eddie feels himself go hot at the accusation.

"No! What the fuck?"

Richie laughs, not unkind. "Are you sure?"

Eddie rolls his eyes and tells him to fuck off. What he doesn't say is how grateful he is to have made Richie laugh once more before he leaves, how much he wants Richie to stay, how much it scares him to admit that. What he does say is, "Do you--" but cuts himself off because Richie has once again started at the same time.

"I should--"

"Yeah," Eddie says when Richie cuts himself off, too. "I know you've got to get up early."

"Right," Richie agrees. "Super early, Sean's a nightmare."

"I'd say I'd text you, but you--"

"Don't have a phone, right. Sorry, I'm a fucking nightmare of a human." He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and withdraws a pen, which he hands to Eddie before flipping his hand, palm up, in between them. "Write down your number, so I can have it when I get a new one?"

Eddie's lips curl into a smile he can feel throughout his whole body. "Yeah, of course," he says, and holds Richie's hand in his own gingerly as he writes down the digits of his cellphone number. He caps the pen and slips it back into Richie's jacket, who then pulls him into another kiss. Eddie can taste his own mouthwash on Richie's lips and tongue and he thinks, again, that he wants him to _stay._

He knows that he can't.

He considers walking Richie to the front door but doesn't want to seem too desperate, so Eddie compromises by walking him to the elevator. He presses the button to call the middle one to his floor and waits. Next to him, Richie is rocking from foot to foot idly--Eddie hasn't seen him sit still all night, other than when he was waiting patiently in Eddie's lap. Neither of them seems to know what to say until Richie blurts out, suddenly, "I still think you're wrong."

The elevator _ding_ s when it arrives on the ninth floor and the doors roll open. Without looking sideways at him, Richie steps in.

"About what?" Eddie asks, half incredulous and half amused. "Are you really doing this, right now?"

Richie's still not looking at him. He's turned back toward Eddie and he's got a foot between the doors so they (hopefully) won't close on him, but he's focusing his attention on the columns of buttons. He takes his time locating and pressing the one for the ground floor before looking Eddie in the eye and saying, "You were wrong when you said I just met you last night. I still don't think that's true."

Eddie doesn't know what he expected, but it definitely wasn't that. "Yeah, maybe I was," he agrees.

"I'll see you later, Eds," Richie says and retracts his foot from between the elevator doors.

Eddie watches them close.

After a minute or two--he's not really great at telling time right now, feels like maybe he's moving through molasses--he stops staring at the quiet elevator and makes his way back to his apartment. He locks the door behind him, turns out the light, brushes his teeth, kicks his pants off at the foot of his bed, and falls asleep abruptly, face-down on top of his blankets.

\---

The next morning, Eddie wakes up and stares at the blank bedroom wall of his minimally-decorated apartment in New York City. He wonders why he feels so empty, but the feeling is familiar enough that he soon forgets about it and moves tiredly to his small kitchen to make coffee. 

**Author's Note:**

> They absolutely should have used a condom but I was too lazy to write it in because this fic already took the fucking life out of me. Please don't take sexual health advice from these two idiots.


End file.
